It took just a day for some clear patterns to emerge in the Xbox Player Voice feedback forum, with the clear-cut leading request being bringing back Xbox console exclusives. A player named Carlos Hernandez shared a request to bring them back, claiming that Xbox isn’t selling enough consoles because there’s no reason to buy them when the games can be bought and played on competing systems. Within a day, that request has received nearly 10,000 upvotes, and over a thousand comments.
There is one case for console exclusives I can think of.
Say a great singleplayer game, like Titanfall 3, or Hi-Fi Rush 2, is pitched. There’s a question from investors: “How will you monetize it?” Because even if it has a $60 price tag or higher, those ventures carry enough risk that they often want to have a strong profit margin on them; an opportunity for growth , not just capacity to make another sequel later. Hence, all the terrible efforts to make forever live service games.
With console exclusives, the clear answer is: This sells the console, which sells the other exclusives. And it means any forever-game people play, we get the 30% cut.
I would prefer it if studios answered with “We just want to make a great game!” or “Y’know what, $60 is enough!” But since we’re not getting those answers, exclusives seem like another approach.